


Kinguyakkii

by Sidney Sussex (SidneySussex)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:43:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SidneySussex/pseuds/Sidney%20Sussex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inuit mythology-based AU.  Clint Barton whistles down the Northern Lights, but the luminescent sky is not quite what he expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kinguyakkii

**Author's Note:**

> _I neither own nor profit from any of these characters; they are the property of Marvel Entertainment, LLC._
> 
> _If you see something that you think ought to be changed or improved, please feel free to let me know, if you'd like. Constructive criticism is always welcome. (And yeah, I totally mix and mash up the comics and the movie 'verse, and play around with timelines a little. Sorry.)_
> 
> _This is a variation on Inuit myths about the Northern Lights. Feel free to educate yourself on the original myths[here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_mythology) or [here](http://www.inuitmyths.com/)._
> 
> _As usual, this is because of feelschat. In particular,[FlatlandDan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FlatlandDan/) and [gqgqqt](http://archiveofourown.org/users/gqgqqt)._

* * *

 

_The Inuits say don't whistle when the lights are high,  
lest they swoop to earth and carry you up to the luminescent sky._

 

Clint Barton has heard the legends, all of them; he knows the stories intimately, knows the hushed sounds of the voices that tell them beneath the open sky, knows the way the great emptiness of tundra feels when the world turns under his feet, knows the song of the spirits themselves when they speak through the Northern Lights and beg for whispered answers from the living. He's been told that if he whistles, then the lights will dance for him, but he is just a speck on the horizon, just a lonely man with a bow and a hidden heart, and who is he to call down the aurora?

He's been told, too, that whistling down the lights brings great misfortune, and that's more like his particular brand of luck, so he keeps his counsel and sits silently under the wide expanse of the night sky.

Clint is not a man given to loneliness, but even he falls victim, on occasion, to the north. It doesn't happen often, but after months of existence on a barren plain, the ache of a hole in his heart he has no way to fill speaks louder than what little common sense he claims, and he sits by his fire late into the night and listens to the Northern Lights whisper and crackle overhead. He doesn't speak their language, but he suspects that the secrets they tell are not meant for men.

It grows, the ache in his heart and the love of the lights and the long nothingness of sunless night, and Clint knows the stories and knows himself and knows that he can resist for a long time, but not forever. He can do many things, but he is restless and _forever_ is not a word meant for him, and one night when the lights are high and heady with a riot of colour, he whistles low into the frozen air.

There's a shift in the sky, and it's the first time Clint has been heard in as long as he can stretch back his thoughts, and it has long since ceased to matter to him whether he's being listened to by the living or by the dead, whether by humans or by spirits or by something colder, brighter, more unknown than any of those things.

He whistles, and the lights dance and dip low until his lungs burn in the chill and his breath catches and he falls asleep to the aurora song.

It's days before he thinks of it again, or maybe longer, because time passes differently under the midday moon, and Clint lives on starlight and solitude until the spirits sing to him too loudly to ignore, and he feels hollow, hollow, and he lays his bow down at his side, cups his hands to his face, and lets fly the cry of a loon across the land.

The lights dip in response, shaft of light like fingers reaching close across the sky, and Clint hears the wordless answer and makes, again, his lonely music, drawing out the sound until his skin is stretched thin like paper and the sound buries itself in the marrow of his bones. They're almost touching, Clint and the aurora, and he remembers curiosity and misfortune and death, but he's a man without a voice and yet the lights are listening, and so his fingers brush across the risers of his bow, and he whistles.

He should have known the warnings would be true, but he's bewitched and no one ever accused Clint Barton of self-preservation instincts, so he sings to the sky and the sky sings back, and it's a kind of making love that soothes a deeper pain than he's used to feeling, and then the sky reaches for him, and all he does is tighten his grip on his bow.

It might be that he sleeps, or it might be that he only forgets, but when he wakes, he is surrounded by the light.

 _Lonely archer_ , says the sky, _you should not have called me here. You did not wish to die._

Has he died?

Would he notice?

"What did I want to do?"

His voice is hoarse and breaks on the first word; he hasn't used it since days of heartbreak and betrayal. It's not a symbol of things he wants to remember, so he doesn't regret the loss of it.

_You wished to live._

He thinks that might be true, but at this point, he isn't sure he really knows anymore what that means.

The sky whispers, _You are not alone, archer, you are half_.

His voice flickers and cracks again when he asks, "Half of… what?"

 _I can show you your other half_ , says the sky, _but this is no favour, lonely archer._

Clint swallows, blinks against the light and shifts his fingers on the bow so that needles of shining silver spill around them and flow down his hands. The air is tight around him, expectant, waiting.

If he says yes, _this is no favour, lonely archer_.

If he says no, _you wished to live_.

He swallows again, nods, and the sky goes dark.

When he next knows the world around him, there are cold, gentle fingers on his neck. They burn, and Clint doesn't know if it's because he called down gods and spirits from the sky, or because he's forgotten what it feels like to be touched. He wants to pull away, but doesn't want to, and the static of skin on frozen skin sets all his nerves ablaze.

"You know the legends," says a voice, not from the sky, but quiet, mild, and Clint's been waiting to hear it all his life, or longer still.

He manages an articulate, "Yeah," opens his eyes, and there's a man sitting over him, Clint's head cradled in his lap and the cool blue of the aurora in his eyes.

"You whistled anyway."

"Yeah."

"You've always been given to recklessness."

It's true, and it doesn't seem strange in the least to Clint that this is something the man knows about him; it's no secret, but then again, men don't keep secrets under the midnight sun.

"Are you my… other half?"

"The sky is a romantic," says the man. "Let's say it's… given to me to watch over you."

Somehow, somehow, that digs more deeply into Clint's atrophied soul than any other words the man might have said. He's always been a loner, both by choice and by the turning of the world, and if there is one piece missing in his life, it's the one where he has something to give back.

He sits up, and the man pulls back from him, but Clint didn't mean for him to think he had to leave, and before he can think it through, one hand is on the man's arm, stopping him, keeping him close.

The man gasps.

It hasn't occurred to Clint before that maybe it's been just as long for him, that maybe Clint's fingers set his skin alight and his blood singing the way his do to Clint. The auroras in his eyes dance and sparkle, and Clint wonders, if he whistles, will this man carry him away and keep him forever?

"No," says the man, and Clint hears infinite sadness like cold moonlight in his voice.

"No… what?" because he hasn't asked his only question yet.

"No. You can't stay, and I can't go."

"Why not?"

There's a smile, hint of one, just a shift of light against the corner of his mouth, and the man says, "You whistled down the Northern Lights. Did you really think you could keep them?"

_This is no favour, lonely archer._

Clint thinks maybe he's understood all along.

"So… I go back, and you…"

"Do what I've always done. I keep an eye on you."

He thinks that over. Nights in the north are long and time means little, and until now he's managed to forget what it's like to have human contact.

"What if I don't want to?"

A shake of the man's head. "Don't regret it," he says. "Most people only get to do this once."

Clint's about to ask what he means when he remembers the oldest of the legends, before time and distance watered it down, _great misfortune_ and then _sadness_ and then, somehow, _dancing_ , but he's beginning to think that maybe the stories aren't watered down so much as different, depending on who's doing the whistling.

The oldest story, though, is death, and he wants to ask if that story will, one day, be his, but he keeps his silence, because he suspects that some questions are not for answering.

"Come here," says the man, and Clint curls against the shape of his body, friction like the fall of snow against him in a winter shelter, quiet breathing like the rhythm of the earth when he presses his ear to the frozen ground and feels the world tilt away.

He listens, and he listens, and he listens, and the whisper and crackle of the song of the Northern Lights lets him fade into sleep.

There is rock, hard beneath him, when he wakes; his hands are wrapped around his bow; the aurora has faded from the sky and there is twilight morning promising itself to him on the horizon.

Sunlight in the north lasts for six months, no star-spangled darkness to wrap itself around him and sing whisper-songs of guardianship and love, no wintertime, no calm.

Clint whistles every day.


End file.
